


Situational Awareness

by lanestreets



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Misunderstandings, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 13:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16160150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanestreets/pseuds/lanestreets
Summary: Steve McGarrett has a soulmark from the moment he’s born. He has a mark that his dad covers up when he’s a baby, an ugly black thing in the shape of knuckles splayed across his cheekbone.Danny Williams gets his mark a few months after he’s born. There’s a black smear across the back of his hand and down two fingers and Danny dreams of the day his soulmate will touch him for the first time and set the mark alight with color.Steve McGarrett grows up hating his soulmark, Danny Williams dreams of the day he'll meet his soulmate. Somehow, against all odds, they find each other.





	Situational Awareness

**Author's Note:**

> at a couple points during this fic, one character mistakenly assumes another will be/is being abused, but it is only a misunderstanding. 
> 
> based on [this ](http://konokalakaua.tumblr.com/post/178549544821/the-ghost-of-keith-kogane-fandangoing-okay)post, where you have a black mark where your soulmate will touch you for the first time, that turns colorful when they touch it, with a healthy dose of angst and misunderstandings.
> 
> for the lovely, incredible, amazing [zav](http://naikia.tumblr.com/) who gave me an amazing tumblr url and also made me an awesome icon!

Steve McGarrett has a soulmark from the moment he’s born. He has a mark that his dad covers up when he’s a baby, an ugly black thing in the shape of knuckles splayed across his cheekbone. 

His dad tells him it’s so people won’t ask questions, when he covers up the mark for Steve. By the time he’s old enough to cover it up on his own, though, Steve knows what it really is, without anyone having to say it. His dad covers up the mark because it’s ugly, because it means that the first time his soulmate touches him it will be angrily, because he’s not good enough for someone to really love. Even his soulmate won’t like him.

He never forgets to cover up his mark, even after his mom dies and his dad sends him away, even when he’s so consumed with grief that he can barely function, even then, he never forgets to cover it up. 

When the day comes that Steve finally graduates from Annapolis, when he finally accepts his commission and ships off to BUD/S, he throws away what remains of the face paint he uses to cover the mark. 

The first day of BUD/S is the first day Steve ever lets someone who isn’t his parents see his soulmark. 

A couple of the guys make jokes about it, speculating wildly about what Steve’ll do to get his soulmate to deck him like that, and he wants to shrink away from the whole conversation, wants the floor to open up and swallow him whole so he can get away from this, but he doesn’t even so much as flinch. To do that would be to show weakness, and Steve refuses to so much as waver. 

Later, he hears Freddie Hart mutter at the other guys, “What if that’s not the first time his soulmate’ll hit him? Have some basic fuckin’ decency, you don’t know what he’s gonna go through.”

After that, the other guys still get on his case about anything and everything else, but no one ever dares mention his soulmark again, and Steve decides he’d do just about anything to protect Freddie Hart. 

Freddie becomes more like a brother than Steve ever knew someone could. Freddie is the one at Steve’s side when a man they’re interrogating starts making digs at Steve’s mark, jeering, “What kind of bitch would let a woman lay hands on him like that? How’d they even let someone like you in?”. Freddie is the one who looks the other way when Steve gives the man a set of bruises to mirror his mark. 

Freddie is the one who takes Steve aside after they’ve gotten what they need,  who checks that Steve’s okay. Freddie is the one that tells Steve that he knows Steve will survive whatever his soulmate throws at him, that there’s nothing else Steve McGarrett could do, and that that makes him all that much stronger. Freddie is the one who helps Steve learn to bear his mark with pride instead of the shame he’s been carrying it with for years.

And Steve? 

Steve is the one who gets Freddie killed.

Steve kind of hates himself for that. 

~*~

Danny Williams gets his mark a few months after he’s born. 

There’s a black smear across the back of his hand and down two fingers and Danny dreams of the day his soulmate will touch him for the first time and set the mark alight with color. He watches as his mom washes the dishes, watches the redpurpleorange swirled together in the mark on her wrist from where his dad had touched her for the first time. He thinks of meeting his soulmate the way his parents met, how they ran into each other, and his dad grabbed his mom to keep her upright, how they had known from just that moment that it was something real. Love at first sight. 

His sisters tease him for it and Matty gets on his case like nobody’s business, for the way he dreams about meeting his soulmate. Matty says he’s being a girl. Bridget and Stella ask him why he seems more excited to meet his soulmate than even they are. His siblings tease him endlessly. 

By the time he’s a teenager, he learns not to talk about it. He learns to keep that daydream to himself, because other kids can be ruthless, but he never lets go of it completely. He still finds himself drifting off each night to the idea of someone trailing their fingers down his hand, of his mark coming to life in a brilliant shock of colors. He imagines a soft smile and kind eyes and a feeling of home.

He knows that not everyone finds their soulmate. He knows the mark on his hand could stay dark forever. He knows that some people find their soulmate only to find out that their bond is nothing more than platonic. 

He knows any number of things could happen. 

He still hopes and daydreams. 

His sisters find their soulmates fresh out of high school. 

Matty doesn’t have a mark at all and he doesn’t care. 

Danny is left wondering, and it’s wildly disheartening. He’s not that old but there’s this sense that he’s never going to find this person who should be such a big part of him and his life.

So when a pretty British lady with no visible mark and a very cute accent rear-ends him, he asks her out to dinner. Dinner turns into a second date, turns into a third, turns into more and suddenly he’s married to someone who isn’t his soulmate and has a daughter with her and it’s not the fantasy he had in his head as a kid, but Grace is the greatest goddamn thing that’s ever happened to him, so he’s sure as hell not going to complain. 

That is until Rachel finds her soulmate and leaves Danny for that tool and takes his Gracie, the one completely good thing in his life, five thousand goddamn miles away from him. 

Right then, he hates Rachel more than he’s ever hated anyone in his life. 

Still, because he can handle losing Rachel, but he cannot handle losing his daughter, he packs up his entire life and he moves to a rock in the middle of the Pacific, where the only people he knows are his daughter, his ex-wife and his ex-wife’s newly found soulmate, Stan. 

He would say he’s trying to make the best of it, but he’s really just trying to be bitter, because he thinks he’s earned the goddamn right. 

~*~

Steve does not know what to make of Detective Danny Williams of the Honolulu Police Department, but he does know that he likes the way that Danny fills out his shirt. 

That’s an issue, obviously, but Steve doesn’t let Danny know that it’s an issue. 

Instead, he pulls his gun, and sneers at Danny’s stupid tie in the Hawai’i heat, and yells to try to get this feeling out, and pointedly ignores the way that Danny’s eyes flick to the black mark on his cheek. 

He is not upset by the way Danny’s lip curls. He’s not. 

~*~

He doesn’t know what he’s thinking, getting Danny reassigned to his shiny brand new task force. 

He really doesn’t know what he’s thinking or what he’s doing or why he’s doing it or  _ what he’s thinking _ . 

But he does it, because he needs fresh eyes and there’s something drawing him to Danny that he can’t explain. 

And because he’s like a magnet for bad luck, because he hurts everyone around him, because he is no good for anyone, he gets Danny shot. Danny goes down and for a long moment, Steve doesn’t see Danny. He doesn’t see Danny, he sees Freddie Hart and his heart fucking shatters in his chest just thinking about that. He has to take a split second to collect himself, to get back the air that was punched out of his chest, and then he’s off after their suspect. 

Danny shoots the suspect in the head after that, and if Steve weren’t so busy being angry that they’ve just lost their only lead, Steve would be busy noticing how hot that look on Danny’s face is. As it is though, they have just lost their only lead to his father’s killer and Steve is  _ royally _ pissed, so he is pointedly not noticing that. 

Instead, he goes back into the house and finds a girl locked away, caged like she’s not human, and her eyes fix on Steve’s soulmark and he fumbles to a halt, crouched in front of her. 

In what he hopes is the right language, he tells her, “ _ You’re safe now, I won’t hurt you, I promise. _ ” 

She reaches out and gently touches Steve’s mark, the barest brush of fingers, and Steve can’t help the minute flinch back he makes. 

“ _ You’re going to be hurt? _ ” she asks and Steve takes a breath and lets it out slowly, before nodding. 

_ “I will be, and I have gotten hurt before, and I know it’s scary, but you will be okay. It will be okay again, one day. Will you let me help you? _ ” he asks, the slightest tremor in his voice. He’d be embarrassed about it in any other situation, but not this one. He can’t be bothered now, not when the girl is letting him take her hand and help her out of this hellhole. 

He gets her safely to an officer and lets himself just feel good about that for a minute, before he has to consider his next move. He’s almost feeling like he’s in a decent place to move forward, when Danny Fucking Williams crowds into his space, poking his finger into Steve’s face, and yelling and yelling and yelling. 

Steve gives him a warning and he doesn’t listen to it, so Steve grabs the fingers Danny has shoved in his face and uses them to wrench Danny’s arm behind his back. He warns Danny again, and tells Danny that they don’t have to like each other, they just have to work together, and he feels a weird sort of buzzing feeling where he’s touching Danny that he ignores in favor of releasing Danny so that he can get back to working. 

Steve doesn’t even have time to steady himself after shoving Danny away before he’s reeling from a vicious punch to the face. It doesn’t feel like a normal hit, either. 

There’s a warmth spreading back from the point of contact, across his face and down into his bones and he thinks,  _ oh. Danny’s my soulmate. _

At the same time, Danny bites out, “You’re right. I don’t like you.” and he stalks away from Steve. 

Steve claps a hand over his cheek and flees the scene after Danny, in what is certainly a very suspicious manner, and he speeds to the store and then he speeds home and avoids every mirror in the whole house and passes out still in his clothes from the day. 

The next morning, he showers and gets dressed, and forces himself to examine the damage. 

The mark on his face is a kaleidoscope of beautiful deep blues and purples, with shocks of fiery reds and oranges mixed in and it’s so stunningly gorgeous that Steve has to tear his eyes away from it after a second. Danny hadn’t given any indication of feeling anything, yesterday, and Steve hadn’t seen a mark on him. Not to mention his rather blatant statement of dislike for Steve. It must be an Abstract Bond, then, a bond only half formed. A disconnect between soulmates, where only one of them feels the connection. 

Bitterly, Steve thinks that it’s probably because he’s so fucked up, because he’s so dysfunctional, because he’s so irreversibly damaged that he doesn’t deserve a soulmate. Then, for a split second he thinks maybe it’s Danny’s fault, but he tamps that down quickly. No way this is Danny’s fault. It must be his own. 

And if it’s Steve’s fault, not Danny’s, there’s no way he’s going to let Danny bear any guilt for it. There’s no way he’s going to chance Danny feeling obligated to stick around with Steve just because Steve got stuck with half an Abstract Bond. 

So, Steve pulls out the small pot and brush he’d hastily purchased at the store the day before, and, with skills he hasn’t used in years, he expertly covers his mark, until it’s a solid black thing again, no longer alight with extraordinary color. This is what he was destined for, probably. He should have been born without a mark. 

It would have been less painful than this. 

He lets himself wallow for five minutes, and then he screws the lid back on the little pot and tucks it and the brush away under the sink, and he goes to work. 

He finds that he does not hate Danny, as much as he wants to. He finds that Danny does not hate him, not really, even though that would’ve made this all so much easier. He finds they work well together, actually, him and Danny, and Chin and Kono. He finds himself with a task force, a unit made up of his equals, that he can lead and be lead by. He finds he’s really excited to get started on this. The Coast Guard will fish Hesse’s body out of the harbor, and he will finally get to see that bastard put in the ground and he will have a new team at his side for all of it and he is excited. 

And then he gets to their new office, and sees Danny staring at his hands. Steve’s heart sinks in his chest a little when he gets there and he sees Danny’s mark, vibrant as Danny himself is, spread across the back of his hand. 

“You met your soulmate?” Steve asks, and he only just succeeds in keeping the tremor from his voice. 

Danny covers the mark with his other hand. “I must’ve brushed up against them in all the chaos that’s been the last couple days. I didn’t even really notice it until I was packing up all my stuff at the station to move it over here. How’s that for situational awareness?” Danny jokes, and he actually seems to be a little amused by the situation, so Steve forces a smile to his face and hopes it doesn’t look as much like a grimace as it feels like. 

He thinks he mostly succeeds, but he’s not taking chances, so he lets out what he hopes is a laugh, and excuses himself to his office and devotes too long to organizing his things and then goes home and swims until he thinks he’ll stop breathing if he keeps going. He showers, and he scrapes off the last remains of the cover-up paint, and he goes to bed. 

He does not dream of Danny. 

He does not. 

(He does. He dreams of Danny and it’s such a nice dream, full of indulgences Steve has hardly let cross his mind before, and unadulterated happiness, in a way Steve has never felt. When he wakes up, and is hit with the realization that none of that can ever be real, Steve actually thinks he might cry. Instead, he runs for five miles and goes into work late, claiming a personal matter when Chin asks what kept him. 

He does not look into Danny’s office to try to get a glimpse of Danny’s soul mark.

He really doesn’t. 

He’s not that much of a masochist.)

~*~

He and Danny continue to work together. Danny is a very tactile person. Danny is, in particular, very tactile with their team, and even more so with Steve. There’s an electricity that crackles across his skin every time Danny touches him that sets a feeling simmering in his gut that he has to tamp down viciously in order to continue functioning like a normal human being. He invests a serious amount of effort into ignoring the way Danny makes him feel, ignoring the twisting, writhing  _ thing _ that’s settled in his chest. It wraps itself around his ribs and pushes and presses and pulls at them, it constricts his heart and lungs and makes it hard to breathe every time he thinks about Danny. Steve knows it’s the bond, trying to get him to accept it, to accept Danny, just like he knows it’ll never actually happen because he’s got too much baggage. He’s damaged goods. He’s not worth Danny Williams. 

It’s a physical ache, watching Danny search for his soulmate. Danny goes over the days he could’ve met his soulmate whenever he gets free time, over and over and over again, retracing his steps and pulling footage from traffic cams in a desperate attempt to find the person he’s meant to spend the rest of his life with. Chin and Kono are helping him, turning it into something of a game, in an effort to cheer Danny up, because he’s a little upset that he missed such a big moment. 

God, Steve wishes that he could’ve missed finding his soulmate. It’d be a whole hell of a lot easier if he didn’t know that he’d spend the rest of his life knowing that his soulmate had someone else. 

It’s too much, for him to try to stick around when Danny gets on about his soulmate. It’s the cause of more than a few arguments between the two of them, and after a while, Steve starts leaving the room when the topic of soulmates comes up. He doesn’t want to be bitter. He doesn’t want to put a damper on everyone’s moods, especially when Kono comes back with her mark swimming bright pink and blue and a smile on her face. Adam Noshimuri is in for the shovel talk of his life, and Steve’s chest  _ aches _ . Knowing that Kono and Chin have found their soulmates, knowing that Kono has Adam, and knowing that Chin has Malia, who doesn’t ever push Chin about his mysterious second soulmark, and knowing that Danny has his mystery soulmate, it makes Steve want to hide himself away from his team. He feels like he’ll ruin them, dim their light by standing around with his darkness for too long. 

He knows, logically, that he’s being ridiculous and that he’s wallowing and throwing himself a truly spectacular pity party. But with everyone finding their happiness, and Steve having to just watch on from the sidelines, he thinks he’s earned some self-pity rights.

So he continues to excuse himself from soulmate conversations. 

Just once, he lingers outside the door to hear what his teammates have to say about his sudden departure from what had been a mild conversation, and it’s the last he ever tries something like that. 

As he’s listening, he hears someone shuffling and a throat clearing and after a long pause, Danny asking, “What is it with McGarrett and soulmates?”

Someone, Chin, sighs and says, “Steve’s always been cagey about his mark. As long as I’ve known him. He has the imprint of a fist on his face, you can’t blame the guy for being like that. Not to mention the way he was raised to think about it.”

Something hits a table with a loud smack, a hard copy of a case file, maybe, and Danny makes a noise in the back of his throat. “What do you mean?” 

Chin sighs again, heavier this time. “You notice that in all of the pictures of Steve when he was younger, he has no mark?”

“Someone taught him to cover it up?”

“You don’t pick that up from just anyone. It must’ve been his parents. I’m sure they were just trying to protect him, you see the looks that people give Steve’s mark even now, but being made to cover your mark like that from such a young age? It’s gotta have a lasting impact. I don’t think Steve let anyone see his mark until he made it to BUD/S and there was no way for him to keep it covered anymore.”

“Jesus,” Danny breathes, so quiet Steve almost doesn’t hear it. “No wonder the guy hates talk about soulmarks. Christ, his parents practically raised him to hate his. What the… just. Wow.” 

“Don’t bring any of this up, you don’t want to do that to him. Just, keep it in mind, I guess,” Chin warns and Steve assumes that Danny nods or something, but he doesn’t really stick around long enough to hear if there is a verbal response as well. 

He shoots Kono a text to say that he’s leaving early and he flees Iolani Palace like a coward. 

He hates that his team is worrying about him. He’s their Commander. Their boss. Whatever he is to this team. He’s the one who’s meant to worry about them, not the other way around. It makes something unpleasant curl in his gut, knowing he’s worrying them. 

So he takes the rest of the day to have a private pity party and he goes in to work the next day with a new mask to wear and a determination to stop worrying his teammates about his stupid soulmate hangups. 

And it works. 

It works well enough for a long, long time. 

Until, of course, Danny Fucking Williams throws a wrench in the whole thing.

~*~

It goes like this. 

They’re at Steve’s house for an evening in, the whole team, their whole ‘ohana, grilling surf and turf out in the backyard, Chin and Danny lounging on the lanai while Steve and Kono man the grill, Malia, Adam, Max and Sabrina having taken over the table already. 

They have a good time, most of them drink too much and Chin and Kono both have to half drag their spouses back to their cars at the end of the night. Max and Sabrina leave in a much more dignified manner, with quiet smiles and goodbyes and then it’s just Steve and Danny. 

Danny, who is far too drunk to drive himself anywhere. 

Steve makes the executive decision that Danny will be staying the night. 

Purely for safety reasons of course. 

He sets about making up the guest room for Danny to stay in, determinedly not thinking about how much will power it’s going to take to just leave Danny by himself when every fiber of Steve’s being is aching to keep Danny close to him. 

He sighs and chalks it up to his current state of inebriation that he’s feeling so sappy. He usually has a better handle on his stupid pining feelings. 

Danny’s eyes are half lidded when Steve gets back downstairs, and he’s got a dopey smile on his face that makes Steve’s heart melt. 

“You’re a good friend, Stevie,” Danny half-slurs as Steve helps him to his feet, and Steve’s lungs stop working for a second when Danny clutches at him in a sloppy half-hug, and he has to gasp to catch his breath. He thanks whatever gods are up there that Danny’s too intoxicated to notice his slip up, and gets Danny up the stairs and into bed without further incident. 

He vaguely remembers setting out a glass of water and some advil for Danny and the same for himself after that, and then collapsing into bed and passing out almost instantly. 

~*~

When he sleeps, he dreams, a really rather pleasant dream. In the dream, his bond with Danny isn’t abstract. It’s not dysfunctional. 

In the dream, Danny isn’t in a bed down the hall, he’s sharing one with Steve, tucked under Steve’s arm and held close against Steve’s chest. Gracie is in the spare room down the hall, the walls painted light blue and plastered with posters she keeps bringing home. 

In the dream Steve wakes up before Danny and sneaks out of bed, and pads down the hall to Grace’s room, wakes her up with a gentle touch on the shoulder. She grumbles a little, but eventually rolls out of bed with a sleepy smile and follows Steve to the kitchen.

In the dream, he and Grace work together to piece together a breakfast of pancakes and bacon and fresh fruit, and the pancakes are not pretty, but Grace demands they taste test them, and they do taste a lot better than they look. She declares it with a grin on her face, and then proceeds to get pancake batter all over Steve’s face and the countertop and he can’t help his laughter. 

In the dream, their laughter wakes Danny, and Danny comes creeping into the kitchen, sneaking up behind Grace to poke her sides and make her squeal. She gets pancake batter on Danny next and soon they have a batch of half burned pancakes because they got distracted laughing and cleaning pancake batter off of faces and hands. 

In the dream, Steve’s soulmark isn’t on his face. It’s somewhere kinder, somewhere that doesn’t display how much his soulmate can’t stand him. 

In the dream, Danny presses a kiss to the swirling color of Steve’s mark, and Steve returns the gesture and Grace fake gags and tells them they’re gross and that when she finds her soulmate, she won’t be nearly as disgusting with them. 

In the dream, Danny raises his eyebrows and scoffs and tells Grace she’s never allowed to grow up and find her soulmate and get married, she’s got to stay little forever and she snorts and protests loudly. 

In the dream, Steve’s heart is full to bursting with his little family there with him, with how content he is to really feel loved. 

In the dream, Steve is happy.

And then he wakes up with a headache and the roll of nausea in his gut, and the nausea is not what’s making him feel this ill.

~*~

A water bottle and granola bar settle the queasy feeling in his stomach, and a few Advil settle the raging headache behind his eyes, and Steve lets out a heavy sigh. The dream he had last night left him feeling hollow and empty inside, and he kind of wants to wrap himself up in a blanket and hide from the world all day or swim until his lungs burn or run until his muscles scream. Something. He’s not sure. He’s just thinking that he really should stop indulging in this self-pity when Danny comes into the kitchen with an empty glass and the bottle of Advil Steve had left out for him the night before. 

Steve forces himself out of his pity party and smirks at Danny. 

“Don’t. Don’t you dare, McGarrett. I don’t know what Super SEAL gene you have that makes you immune to it, but the rest of us normal folks get hungover when we drink like we all did last night,” Danny mutters miserably, letting out a pathetic sounding groan when he finishes speaking. Steve wants to run his hands through Danny’s hair. 

He does not. 

He takes the glass from Danny’s hands and fills it again, and presses it back into Danny’s hand. “You need to hydrate.” 

Danny grumbles, but he listens. “You got a spare toothbrush? My mouth tastes like a wet dog.” Steve raises an eyebrow at that and Danny scowls. “Shut up. Shut up. You didn’t say anything, but I know you were thinking it. Don’t say a word, unless it’s to tell me where I can find a toothbrush.”

Steve chuckles, and shakes his head. “In the bathroom off my room. Should be a spare one under the sink.”

Danny lets out a sigh of relief and gives Steve a pained looking smile, and sets the half-empty glass on the table and heads up the stairs. Steve has a split second of silence before alarm bells go off in his head, and Danny comes thudding back down the stairs, holding the cover up paint that Steve had momentarily forgotten about. 

“Steven, what the hell is this?” Danny demands in a low, deadly calm voice. 

Steve’s heart seizes in his chest and he stops breathing for a long moment. When he doesn’t answer, Danny slams the container down on the table, and storms over to Steve. Before he can even move to defend himself, frozen by fear, Danny’s reaching for Steve’s face. 

The day old paint comes off with one strong swipe of Danny’s thumb and Steve flinches away from his touch. 

“Steve,” Danny says, his voice impossibly soft. 

“I-I can explain,” Steve says, an uncharacteristic stumble in his words. His heart is hammering. His chest aches. He feels like he can’t breathe. 

Danny takes a few steps back and gives Steve such a wounded look Steve nearly tears up. 

“You found your soulmate? And you’ve been hiding it? Why?”

“I-” Steve fights for the right words to explain himself, not sure how to get himself out of this one. “I-I mean they-they, uh.”

Danny’s gaze drops from Steve’s soulmark, giving Steve a quick once over. It settles on the bruises up and down Steve’s arms, from Steve’s last sparring session with Kono. 

Steve can see it in Danny’s eyes the moment all of the wrong pieces click together in Danny’s mind. He can see it, because suddenly there’s murder written in the lines of Danny’s face, in the set of his jaw, in the furrow of his brow. 

“They’re hitting you,” Danny says. He does not try to sugar coat it. “They’re hitting you and you’re lying for them. Why?”

Steve can’t make his mouth work. It opens and closes, like a fish, and nothing comes out. He just stares in shock and horror as Danny throws his hands into the air, and then pokes his finger towards Steve, demanding and concerned all rolled into one expression. 

“Steve, who the fuck is it? Who is doing this to you? Just because they’re your soulmate does not mean that you have to cover for them. Being someone’s soulmate does not give someone license to hurt you like this and just because they’re your soulmate does not mean you have to tolerate this from them. We see cases like this at work all the time. You are just as deserving of and entitled to a sense of safety as every one of the people we’ve helped. Your well-being is more important than some stupid bond.” Steve opens his mouth and chokes on his words and Danny’s face falls, his expression turning so horribly miserable that Steve wants to cry. He does not, because he is not that kind of person, but he thinks about it. “Steve, hey, come on. Please talk to me. Let me help you. Who did this to you?”

Steve takes a deep breath and closes his eyes because he can’t look Danny in the eye while he says this. He debates lying for half a second, before he decides that’d cause so many more issues that it’s not worth it. 

“You did,” Steve says, in a voice so unlike his own, he doesn’t recognize it, even as he’s saying the words. “You, when we were trying to hunt down Hesse. You-” Realization dawns on Danny’s face, followed by unconcealed horror, and Steve breaks off. He doesn’t have to continue. Danny knows what he’s talking about. 

“Oh,” is all Danny has to say. 

“This,” Steve mutters, raising one arm, “is from Kono. We were sparring a couple days ago. She doesn’t pull her punches.”

“Right, yeah, no, of course,” Danny says. He glances back at the pot of cover up paint on the table. 

“You don’t have to feel obligated to anything. I know you’re looking for your soulmate, I know you’ve got someone waiting out there for you. It’s not your fault that I have an Abstract Bond,” Steve says quickly, wanting to reassure Danny that he doesn’t hold it against him.

“No, but it is my fault that you’ve got a mark in the shape of a fist on your face,” Danny mumbles, and Steve doesn’t think he was really meant to hear that. Louder, Danny says, “I think I should go.” 

He barely pauses to grab his keys and his wallet before he flees the house like it’s on fucking fire. Steve sits down at the kitchen table and stares blankly at the stupid pot of cover up paint, and silently berates himself for his carelessness and idiocy, and if a few stray tear escape before he can scrub them away? 

There’s no one around to see it anyway. 

~*~

Steve debates going back to bed and staying there for the rest of eternity. 

Ultimately, he decides against that, because he is a grown ass man, a highly trained Navy SEAL. He can handle some unpleasant emotions. He’s fine. He’s dealt with far worse before. He’s fine. 

So instead of crawling into bed and hiding from the world he showers away the sticky feeling of a morning after a night of drinking, and he throws on a swim suit and swims until his lungs can’t take it anymore. He showers again when he gets back and scrubs his skin until it’s pink and the bruises on his arms stand out even more, and smiles bitterly at them. After he scrubs his face he watches the last flecks of dried paint circle around the drain, continues staring long after they’re gone.

He gets out of the shower and mechanically covers the mark and forces himself to eat. He cleans his gun for something to do. Polishes his badge. Does all the dishes from the night before by hand. 

The next thing he knows it’s growing dark out, and he finally lets himself go to bed, curls up and falls into a restless sleep. 

This time, when he dreams it is not pleasant. Tonight, his dreams are nightmares, full of wicked grins and guns and fists swung towards his face. 

He doesn’t feel well rested when he wakes.

~*~

In the morning, he gets up and throws on the first thing he finds and tugs on his sneakers and sets off on the longest run he’s been on in months. 

By the time he gets home, his calves are screaming and his knees ache and he’s covered in sweat and his whole body is trembling, but at least he’s focused on the physical discomfort instead of the soul deep hurt that he feels over the rejected soulbond. 

He drags himself into his house, and into the kitchen, digging through the fridge to find the orange juice. He takes a swig straight from the jug and barely has it back in the fridge when his front door slams open. Steve shuts the fridge and dives for a kitchen knife, cursing himself for forgetting to lock the front door behind himself. 

“You absolute idiot!” Danny shouts, as he comes storming into the kitchen. 

Steve’s hand trembles where he’s holding onto the knife he’d wrestled from the block in a panic, his body still exhausted from his run.

Danny doesn’t even pause at the sight of the knife. He strides across the kitchen and gently pulls the knife from Steve’s shaking hands and places it on the counter. 

Steve can’t even voice his confusion, barely has time to show it on his face, before Danny’s pulling at his shoulders. Steve really doesn’t have the energy to do much else, so he lets Danny tug him down to his level. 

And then Danny’s hands are cupping his face, and Danny whispers, “Stop me if you need to,” and kisses Steve like he is a damned man and Steve is his salvation. 

Steve’s knees give out underneath him, and Danny breaks the kiss and catches him, pressing him into the counter behind him to keep him upright. 

“Hey, hey, Steve, you okay?” Danny asks, soft and a little sad and Steve nods stupidly, his mouth hanging open just a little. “Was that okay?”

“You have a soulmate,” Steve says, by way of an answer. 

Danny fists his hands in Steve’s shirt for a moment, still pressed completely into Steve, leaned up against the counter. Danny sighs, and releases him after a long moment. Steve watches silently as Danny wets a folded paper towel and steps up to him again, reaching for his face, and ever so gently wiping away the cover up paint. He just stares at Steve’s soulmark for a moment before he holds up the hand that bears his own mark. 

“I do have a soulmate,” Danny says. “You. Steve, our colors are the same. And this? This mark? This is where you touched me, for the first time. Just before I-” Danny cuts off and brushes his fingers over Steve’s mark almost reverently. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I did this to you. I’m so sorry that I didn’t realize that you were- that we-”

Steve just blinks at Danny for a second, opens and closes his mouth a few times. 

“I threatened to break your fingers,” he finally says, and then smacks himself in the forehead. 

Danny laughs, and Steve wishes he could hear that sound all the time. 

“Yeah, and then I decked you, and didn’t realize that we’d set off each other’s marks.” He takes Steve’s hands and kisses his knuckles before squeezing them. “Will you forgive me? For…” Danny trails off and makes a wide sweeping gesture, between them. “All of this. For not realizing. For leaving you with that mark. Just, all of it.”

Steve shakes his head. “No, you don’t- there’s nothing to apologize for. Not you. I should- I mean, I lied to you, Danno. I kept it-”

“Oh put a sock in it, you big lug. We both did some jumping to conclusions, huh?” Danny huffs out and amused sound. “Quite the pair we are, aren’t we?”

Steve looks at Danny, at the smile crinkling the corners of his eyes, and he can’t bother being worried anymore. Not when his soulmate is smiling at him like that. 

He opens his mouth to say something. Probably to apologize again. Danny cuts him off. 

“I don’t want to hear anything more from you until you’ve showered, you animal. What is this, you’re disgusting. Go, shower, I’m not going anywhere.”

Steve hesitates, decides,  _ fuck it _ , and pulls Danny close to press a kiss to his forehead, leaving sweaty marks all over Danny’s shirt in the process. 

He flees upstairs to shower, Danny’s half-angry “Neanderthal!” following him as he ascends the stairs, and the aching thing that has been twisting in between his ribs for months finally,  _ finally  _ settles. 

Steve looks at himself in the mirror when he reaches his bathroom, and for the first time, he see his soulmark, and he smiles. 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @ [konokalakaua!](http://konokalakaua.tumblr.com/) i love hearing from you all!


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